Memoirs help 92-year-old city man recall his WWII service

By REBECCA HAMMDemocrat Staff Writer

Saturday

Sep 29, 2007 at 3:15 AM

DOVER — Leslie Duston was an iceman like his father when he was drafted into World War II.

He had graduated from high school a few years earlier and was making a living by harvesting blocks of ice from an ice pond and delivering them to homes in Hampstead. He also doubled as a school bus driver.

Duston, who resides at the Langdon Place in Dover, will turn 92 on Monday and with the help of a memoir he wrote back in 1988, he can recount his tour of duty in the 344th Engineer Regiment of the U.S. Army.

Although it was almost 65 years ago, Duston remembers going through basic training in England, amphibious training on the Mediterranean in Oran, Algiers, and building bridges and roads, hospitals and freight yards in Italy, Germany and France.

Duston titled his memoirs, "My World War II Journey," which was written at the insistence of a relative.

Duston was reluctant to compose the tale, but his sister-in-law persisted and he began writing his memories by using a military service book the Army gave him at the end of his tour.

Duston is pleased with the memoirs and the reaction from his loved ones.

"I've had a lot of people read my little book," he said.

Friends, relatives, and residents and caretakers at Langdon Place have all read Duston's recollections.

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs reports Duston is one of the 3.2 million surviving World War II veterans in the United States.

Documentaries like the Ken Burns film, "The War" have put the limelight on The Greatest Generation by providing a platform for service men and women to tell their stories. Another segment of "The War" aired recently on NHPTV. The Library of Congress is also collecting personal narratives, correspondence and visual artifacts of wartime service for its ongoing Veterans History Project.

Mark Foynes, the executive director for the Wright Museum, a World War II museum in Wolfeboro, says it is important to catalog the stories of The Greatest Generation.

"There's a wonderful human impulse to want to share a story; to help tell that story by sharing your own personal accounts," Foynes said.

Duston's military story begins on May 2, 1942. He left for Fort Devens in Ayer, Mass. and went onto Camp Claiborne, in Louisiana to join the A Company of the 344th Engineer Regiment.

By July 1, 1942, he left Fort Dix, N.J. in the SS Pierce bound for England.

"The sea was just like glass, which made for smooth crossing. And it was foggy so the enemy ships couldn't see us too well. Around July 12, 1942, we reached Greenock, Scotland," Duston wrote.

After basic training, his company moved quickly across Europe building bridges across the Danube, the Rhine, and other major rivers and repairing roads.

Duston recalls the front lines were moving fast and his company didn't stay in towns for more than a week or two.

While stationed in Italy, Duston recalled close calls with enemy fire.

He and some other soldiers were filling shell holes in the road while the cook and the barber set up inside an abandoned house.

"They had started a fire in the fireplace, and as soon as the smoke started coming out of the chimney, we heard a loud noise and whistling through the air coming towards us. We all stopped what we were doing, grabbed our rifles and lay flat on the ground," he wrote.

Shortly after, the men heard a loud whizzing and another explosion.

"By that time the cook, the barber and a buddy of ours who was half shaved, came running. Every time we would hear one, we would lay flat on the ground, until we got around a sharp corner in the road. They finally did hit the house we were in. We called them screaming meemies."

In the next town his company set up in, he was half way between the ammunition dump and the front line, Duston said he could hear the "screaming meemies" day and night, along with rifles and machine guns.

"When we invaded the southern part of France we were building bridges, fixing the roads and going from house to house looking for booby traps," Duston said.

"In another town we were digging up mines in a mine field when one of them went off and one of my buddies got a piece of shrapnel in has back. They took him to the nearest Army hospital, patched him up and shipped him back home."

Despite all the close calls Duston said only two men from his company were killed during duty.

He returned home from France in late September of 1945. He was married in 1947 and bought a home in Plaistow, N.H., where he served as a firefighter for 25 years and retired from West Electric after 30 years.

Foynes says its important the stories of World War II veterans get told.

"I think this is a phenomenon. There's often a reluctance for veterans to share, especially the more brutal details of the war. For decades, the World War II generation were very taciturn and laconic for sharing their personal stories because they recognize their contributions. They feel they have a sense of obligation to the next generation coming up," said Foynes.

Duston said after writing his memoirs he lost the book from the U.S. Army that listed the dates and places included in his deployment, which makes the story he wrote that much more valuable.

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